Announcing Ycash, The First "Friendly Fork" of the Zcash Blockchain

I think this depends on your definition of “friendly” and one’s view on whether forks always (or with high probability) have a dilutive effect on both communities.

As prompted by my questions and some of this discussion, there are good reasons that the broader Zcash community might not be immediately better off as a result of this fork:

  • Without separate address formats, the UX could create confusion or lost funds. This does not strike me as better or friendly.

  • Using the same PoW puts Ycash users at risk of 51% attacks and reduces Zcash security. This also does not strike me as better or friendly.

  • Doing this could reduce the privacy of shielded users (even with Sapling inclusion) across both chains. Not better or friendly.

@hloo has stated in this thread that he’ll consider inclusion of a new address format—which is great—but the other issues (and previous questions I and others have raised) should be considered critically.

Longer term it could certainly have a positive effect! But simply stating it’s friendly doesn’t make it so, particularly in the short-term.

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Here is an important question / thought ?

What is to keep the current Zcash founder rewards (those that have HODL their Zcash Coins) and or Zcash themselves from dumping every single Ycash coin within a few days of its inception and making this a penny coin almost instantly?

And if the response is “We would not do that” I call Male Bovine Fecal Matter

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I’am still very sceptical to such “friendly fork” and more and more concerns raise the longer i think about it:

1.) Security concern: As mentioned allready several times if Ycash isn’t the top coin of the algo there will be ALWAYS the threat of a 51% attack. In case such attack soon or late happens it would have a negative impact for Zcash as well. Just be sure that Zcash will be mentioned in every article as well beside Ycash.

2.) Mining Community concern: Zcash since Asic “adoption” has without doubt lost a lot of the mining community. Best indicator is the drop of the active wallets from over 121,000 to ~20,000. The launch of Ycash will come around the same time ETH switches to POS. There is no doubt that the ETH hashpower will be distributed along the remaining projects even given Ycash some miner activity boost when it goes to gpu mining. However, this would as well mean that immediatly there is a good chance Ycash outperforming on miner count & active wallets. I can’t see a positive impact for Zcash here. A real good strategy in my opinion would have been ZEC switching back to gpu mining and taking ALL the free hashpower from ETH. There is a good chance ZEC would become #1 for gpu mining making it as secure as ETH is currently against 51% attacks. Not even talking about the huge active mining commmunity increase and the active wallets. No idea why nobody as even strategical thoughts at Zcash but leave this field to some fork coin…

  1. Economical concern 1: There is a good chance that economicaly such friendly fork pricewise will turn out like the Bitcoin Cash fork, no matter it was unfriendly “war” fork. Making both currencies at least short time losing a lot on their price levels. Every price change has impact on the (ZE) Dev and Foundation funding as well. At very least there is a risk that one if not both may lose on price short term, mid term and eventually even long term.

4.) Economical concern 2: Dumping Ycash immediatly. There is again a good chance, as witnessed allready at Zcash release that price will fall a lot after release. This is just logical as forks from a given currency and/or airdrops are just a “bonus” to orginal currency holder. There is no really incentive, expect for hardcore believers, to hold such coin after it’s a known impact that price in most cases will fall immediatly after release. At least that’s my overservation on several forked coins, including Zcash itself. Sure, there are some expections, but these are way less.

5.) Economical concern 3: As seen on many pre-airdrop/fork cases. The price of the main currency will temporary rise right bevor the snapshot. No doubt that this will happen to ZEC as well attracting a lot of day traders that will sell right bevor the snap shot their ZEC at highest price as right after the snapshot price will fall. I even have no doubts that exactly this scenario will happen. As soon as the snapshot will happen ZEC price will go down immediatly.

6.) Zcash Dev Resources: I have no doubt that this will take away Zcash Dev Resources which try to help at start and mostly later as well. Each “wasted” Zcash Dev resources means less development at Zcash itself. No matter how big the “help” for Ycash is it will always proportionally impact the Zcash development. This is even more likely as the ECC company and others will have a big stake in Ycash anyway. Just logical in my opinion.

7.) Zcash investors and independence concerns: I have no idea how big the stakes are from the early Zcash investors like Roger Ver and all the others, but someone should/could assume that they still hold large ZEC stakes. All these will become automaticly Ycash bag holders immediatly, just as usual with chain forks. Nobody knows their stance towards the Ycash project. At release date all these big stake holders may act upon their personal economical believe, holding, dumping, or pump and dump. Nobody knows but i think this should be at least a minor concern as well.

8.) “Expiring ZEC founders reward bypass attempt” concern: As i said earlier in this thread it could be seen as an attempt to bypass the expiring ZEC founders attempt. With the ZEC founders reward soon (2020) expiring, having a “friendly fork” with creates a new founders reward for lifetime and with the intention to share future technology/innovations/whatever from Ycash towards Zcash it’s really near to think that just a new development fund is created to replace the expiring one. Even if it’s not intentionally the result will be the same. What happens anyway in 2020 when the founders reward expires and no more funding is generated long term? Some conspiracy theories: Could it be that step by step the Zcash team gets hired by the Ycash team? Could it be that Ycash becomes the major coin and Zcash gets more or less just abandoned? Has the change from Zcash Company into Electric Coin Compain something to do with this? Is it really just and only 1 person behind the Ycash project or supported by way more inside/internal ZEC “people”? And and and. Just raising some conspiracy theories that would raise soon or late anyway. I have no stance on these by the way!

9.) Upolding a promise which isn’t broken yet concern: It has been mentioned allready, but it’s worth to mention it again. How strange is this indeed? Promising to uphold a broken promise which isn’t broken yet and there is even so far no indicator that it will be broken? There are 2 possible options here in my opinion. Either it is internally known allready that the founders reward will be extended or the Ycash statement is at least missleading and suggesting that the promise will be broken. After the whole asic resistance debatte this suggesting isn’t really friendly at all and puts Zcash into a corner with the slogan: “We don’t care about promises ever…”

10.) ZEC foundation support concern: While i agree with everything @acityinohio wrote in this topic expect this one: I wish you luck, as does the Zcash Foundation. We will continue to support Zcash (and thus Ycash downstream)
Seriously? You guys/girls at the foundation are realy great people i honestly like, but you are still lagging a lot behind the goals made for/by the foundation. I strongly hope you re-consider this one and put 100% into Zcash matters and leave alone every non-ZEC project. At least as long as ALL ZEC foundation goals are achieved. After that, if you still have some free spare time support whomever you feel like, but until this happend and the ZEC foundation is lagging i strongly hope ALL effords are put into the ZEC direction and nothing else.

11.) Recent news concern: Right now the online news are distributing all around this Ycash fork with headlines like:

  • Zcash announces Ycash hardfork: (Strange i didn’t saw any Zcash announcement so far)
  • The Zcash community has announced that Ycash …(A One-Man-Show) shouldn’t be mentioned as the community. There was no poll, no discussion, no nothing, how can someone talk about the community???)
  • We are launching Ycash to restore a goal (Again suggests a whole team and/or bigger community part behind this project)
  • Ycash will maintain the positive features of Zcash such as zero-knowledge infrastructure.(Ok, and the negative features will remain with Zcash, lol, very friendly, thx a lot)

Stoping here, got to long anyway allready, not that there are not more concerns, but hopefully others will mention them…

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I would be very surprised if ECC chose to compromise core development efforts to support a fork. Just because Nathan and Zooko are friendly to forks doesn’t mean that they will actively support them.

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This would mean if Ycash “team” contacts Zcash team for help on various code matters, implentations, security questions, whatever, there will be no help.

Because IF Zcash dev team gets back to help requests it is taking away resources to help/fix Ycash fork/code/whatever problems, not?

Count me in for a pool for ycash :slight_smile:

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A Ycash pool on Suprnova would be fantastic! Thank you so much @ocminer for considering that!

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I would argue that short term effects are also positive. “All publicity is good publicity.” Simply arguing whether or not a fork is “friendly” or “unfriendly” (whatever tf those mean!) gathers attention and makes community engagement appealing.

Of course, you could know these same facts and be a step ahead of me, helping to create a little controversy. It worked on me.

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I have written a review of the Ycash fork here.

Just some more thoughts:

1.) There is allready an ERC token available with the name Ycash, Total Supply 500,000,000. Couldn’t find more info and there is a good chance it’s an abondoned project.

2.) There is as well a financial payment service active with the name Ycash. Not sure if this could cause problems in future. http://www.ycash.com/

3.) There si allready a company registered with the name Y Cash Software Solutions Pvt Ltd. These create wallets and other software for mobile phones. http://www.ypaycash.com/

4.) Thinking about it, will there be eventually 2 hardforks? One away from the Zcash chain and temporary on equihash and the 2nd one to another gpu algo? Both could be really tough ones having in mind that equihash is an asic algo.
The first one will expose Ycash for sure to a 51% attack.
The 2nd change to a gpu friendly algo will cost a fortune at start to ensure hashpower. I remember the fork from Electroneum last year away from asics to a gpu algo, it has cost them a fortune to buy for weeks nicehash hashpower… Just something to think about as well…

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So if you hold your zec in kraken, then after fork kraken should automatically add ycash? Or just transfer your funds to your wallet before fork?

An exchange “can” support a fork but it’s up to the exchange if they do. Best way on most cases is to have the amount of main currency the fork happens in a wallet you hold the privacy keys.

But as said, exchanges can support forks but it’s absolutly up to them. In the case of Zcash there is a good chance many of them will support as it’s a top currency.

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This has to be the most accurate line you have ever written in your life

ZCash has a well-respected team and solid, if unexciting marketing effort

Then you completely drop the ball here–

Let’s look at what YCash is offering;

Okay What??? You say let’s look at what its offering then nothing… Y Cash is offering nothing? The next thing you write is in the block below and that has NOTHING to do with what YCash is attempting
to offer.

There is a crunch coming to ZCash when the Founder’s Reward comes to an end. Someone, somewhere, will have to pay for continued development but it more realistic to assume that someone will pay for a well-established team than a start-up.

@hloo Every single one of the above items could be a real issue

Were the people behind Ycash aware of the items mentioned by boxalex?

I had been thinking about it, but boxalex put pen to paper, YCash would have to fork twice in order to become GPU only. Once Ycash forks at Zcash block 570,000 at what block is Ycash going to fork to become ASIC resistant?
Is Ycash then prepared to fork every 3 to 6 months to remain ASIC resistant?

I just noticed even the “registered trademark” remark on the ycash.com website on top of it.
In my opinion this is calling for trouble soon or late …

Their business description clashes with Ycash as well. Only clean way forward is if they give permission to use the name.

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ycash is a bad name for a cryptocurrency, imo. the fact the name’s already widely used should be a nonstarter. should at least own the ycash(.)com domain. would rebrand. also would get rid of transparent addresses to make the new coin more interesting.

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totally agree this : get rid of T address and new coin needs more new interesting

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By now i have my doubts that Ycash will lead to something real interesting and intriguing.

Having in mind that a Blockchain Project is a multi-million dolar business someone can only wonder about the approachso far.

Nobody even checked for allready used Ycash names and businesses, available domain name, whatever. Seriously, that’s a pure fail start allready.

Won’t even repeat all the other points i have mentioned so far …
All i hope is that this strange Ycash project won’t have a too negative impact for Zcash as i personally by now exclude a positive impact… Just my personal opinion of course.

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I’m split on this one (no pun intended… maybe a little :wink:).

On one side, I’m a big fan of people working on and running the code they choose rather than being forced to accept decisions they fundamentally disagree with.

Open dialogue and community involvement with large changes, especially economic, is something Zcash needs to work on in regards to the ‘final say’. Ideally the Community Governance Panel would step into this role and vote on changes before they are finalized.

On the other hand, I disagree for the current need for Ycash. Are the differences in opinion so large that we can’t compromise? This move further dilutes the Zcash community, if only a little, and digs up the ASIC vs GPU debate. Forks tend to centralize each side of the split. IMO, that’s a step in the wrong direction.

Ycash Security Concerns:
If Ycash’s price increases to a certain level, it will need to continually change the PoW to remain ASIC resistant. Monero (and now Ycash) will be forever outrunning secret ASICs as a function of the price. PoW changes will need to happen more frequently as manufacturers become more and more sophisticated. An ASIC can be developed in as little as one to three months at this time. That’s a powerful and potentially dangerous foe. Further, smaller GPU-mined coins are at the mercy of rented hashrate that could 51% attack, given a specific price.

Ycash’s Ongoing Development Concerns
Zcash has an incredible development team. If Ycash is to become something serious it will need to recruit developers with a similar vision and beliefs. This is hard and takes time.

Overall, I have a great deal of respect for @hloo and wish him well.

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